Nobel winner who co-discovered HIV dies at 89

French virologist Luc Montagnier, who is credited with co-discovering HIV, died at 89 years old on Tuesday. 

The scientist died in a suburb of Paris at a hospital, decades after discovering the virus that caused AIDS, which killed millions of people, The Washington Post reported. 

Montagnier discovered HIV in his lab in Jan. of 1983 when he was a senior researcher at Pasteur Institute.

In 2008, Montagnier won  the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, sharing credit with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.

It took decades for Montagnier to receive credit for his discovery after rejection from the scientific community and a battle with National Cancer Institute researcher Robert C. Gallo.

Montagnier’s early research of HIV was initially rejected by the scientific community and took time for them to accept his work, according to The Post. 

He also went into a years-long battle with Gallo to determine who was the first to make certain discoveries about HIV. Ultimately, the two agreed to share credit for the HIV blood test. 

The work of Montagnier has likely saved millions of lives as it was one of the quickest scientific discoveries to a disease that led to a cure. 

“Never before has science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment for a new disease entity,” the Nobel committee said in 2008. “Successful antiretroviral therapy results in life expectancies for persons with HIV infection now reaching levels similar to those of uninfected people.”